One in five communal protests in Karnataka

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BENGALURU: Karnataka accounted for one fifth of all the communal protests in the country in 2016, with about four such protests held per day on an average.

As per the data released by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, 3,441 agitations took place in the state in 2016, well behind most other large states. But the state had the third highest number of communal protests (1,457). They accounted for 20.65 per cent of such protests in the country.

The high number could be a direct outcome of an increase in communal clashes.

According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, the number of communal clashes in the state rose a staggering 330 per cent from 38 in 2014 to 163 in 2015.

In Karnataka, the number of protests reduced by 13.35 per cent from the last year’s 3,971. But the number of communal protests increased by 15.36 per cent.

As per the data released by BPRD earlier, Karnataka had the highest number of student protests between 2009 and 2014, but that statistics seems to have come down as in 2016, there were only 119 protests by students in the state.